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LOYAL PUBLBCATION SOCIETY, 

863 BROADWAY. 

No. 16. 



READ AT THE INAUGURAL MEETING OF THE LOYAL NATIONAL 
• LEAGUE, BY THE REQUEST OF THE LEAGUE, IN UNION 
SQUARE, NEW YORK, ON THE 11th OF APRIL, 18C3. 

It is just and wise that men engaged in a great and arduous cause 
aliould profess anew, from time to time, their faith, and pledge themselves 
to one another, to stand by their cause to the last extremity, even at the 
sacrifice of all they have and all that God has given them — their wealth, 
their blood, and their children's blood. We solemnly pledge all this to 
our cause, for it is the cause of our Country and her noble history, of 
freedom, and justice, and truth — it is the cause of all we hold dearest on 
this earth : we profess and pledge this — plainly, broadly, openly in the 
cheering time of success, and most fervently in the day of trial and 
reverses. 

We recollect how, two years ago, when reckless arrogance attacked 
Fort Sumter, the response to that boom of treasonable cannon was read, 
in our city, in the flag of our country — waving from every stee[)le and 
school-house, from City Hall and Court House, from every shop whidow 
and market stall, and fluttering in the hand of every child, and on the 
head-gear of every horse in tlie busy street. Two years have passed ; 
uncounted sacrifices have been made — sacrifices of wealth, of blood, and 
limb, and life — of friendship and bx'otherhood, of endeared and hallowed 
pursuits and sacred ties — and still the civil war is raging in bitterness and 
heart-burning — still we make the same profession, and still we pledge 
ourselves firmly to hold on to our cause, and persevere in the struggle into 
which unrighteous men, bewildered by pride, and stimulated by bitter 
hatrexi, have plunged us. 

We profess ourselves to be loyal citizens of these United States ; and by 
loyalty we mean a candid and loving devotion to the object to which a loyal 
man — a loyal husband, a loyal friend, a loyal citizen — devotes himself. We 
eschew the attenuated arguments derived by trifling scholars from meagre 
etymology. We take the core and substajice of this weighty word, and 
pledge ourselves that we will loyally — not merely outwardly and formally, 
according to the letter, but frankly, fervently and according to the spirit — 
adhere to our countiy, to her institutions, t© ifreedom, and her power, and 
to that great institution called the government of our country, founded by 
our fathers, and loved by their sons, and by all right-minded men who have 
become citizens of this land by choice and not by birth — who have 
wedded this country in the maturity of their age as verily tlieir own. We 
pledge ourselves as National men devoted to the Nationality of this great 
people. No government can wholly dispense with loyalty, except the 



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^ercest despotism ruling by naked intimidation ; but a republic stands in 
greater need of it than any other government, and most of all a republic 
be-=et by open rebellion and insidious treason. Loyalty is pre-eminently a 
civic virtue in a free countjy. It is patriotism cast in the graceful mould 
of candid devotion to the harmless government of an unshackled nation. 

In pledging ourselves thus, we know of no party. Parties are unavoida- 
ble in free countries, and may be useful if they acknowledge the country 
far above themselves, and remain within the sanctity of the fundamental 
law which protects the enjoyment of libei-ty prepared for all within its 
sacred duinain. But Party has no meaning in far the greater number of 
the highest and the common relations of human life. When we are ailing, 
we do not take medicine by party prescription. We do not build ships by 
party measurement ; we do not pray for our daily bread by party dis- 
tinctions ; we do not take our chosen ones to our bosoms by party demar- 
cations, nor do we eat or drink, sleep or wake, as partisans. We do not 
enjo}' the Howers of spring, nor do we harvest the grain, by party lines. 
We do not incur punishments for infractions of the commandments 
according to party creeds. We do no pursue truth, or cultivate science, 
by party dogmas ; and we do not, we must not, love and defend our 
country and our liberty, dear to us as part and portion of our very selves, 
according to party rules. Woe to him who does. When a house is on 
fire, and a mother with her child cries for help at the window above, shall 
the firemen at the engine be allowed to trifle away the precious time in 
party bickerings, or is then the only word — *' Water! pump away ; up with 
the ladder !" 

Let us not be like the Byzantines, those wretches who quarrelled about 
contemptible party refinements, theological though they were, while the 
truculent Mussulman was steadily drawing nearer — nay, some of whom 
would even go to the lord of the crescent, and with a craven heart would 
beg for a pittance of the spoil, so that they would be spared, and could 
vent their party spleen against their kin in blood, and fellows in religion. 
We know of no party in our present troubles ; the word is here an 
empty word. The only line which divides the people of the North, runs 
between the mass of loyal men who stand by thL-ir country, no matter to 
what place of political meeting they were used to resort, or with what 
accent they utter the language of the land, or what religion they profess, or 
what sentiments they may have uttered in the excitement of former dis- 
cussions, on the one hand, and those on the other hand, Mho keep outside 
of that line — traitors to their country in the hour of need — or those avIio 
allow themselves to be misled by shallow names, and by reminiscences 
which cling around those names from by-gone days, finding no application 
in a time which asks for things more sterling than names, theories, or 
platforms. 

If an alien enemy were to land his hosts on your shores, would you fly 
to your arms and ring the tocsin because your country is in danger, or 
would you meditatively look at your sword and gun, and spend your time 
in pondering whether the administration in power, which must and cui 
alone direct the defence of your hearths, has a right to be styled by this or 
that party name, or whether it came into power with your assistance, and 
will appoint some of your party to posts of honor or comfortable emolu- 



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. mcnts ? And will any one now lose his time and fair name as an honest 
^ and brave citizen, when no foreigner, indeed, threatens your country, at 
C;least nut directly, but far more, when a reckle.-s host of law defying men, 
^^^''hcaping upon yon the vilest vituperation that men who do not leave bc- 
' hind them the ingenuity of civilization when they relapse into barbarism, 
can invent — when this host threatens to sunder your country and cleave 
your very history in twain, to depinve you of your rivers which God has 
given you, to extinguish your nationality, to break down your liberty and 
to make that land, which the Distributor of our sphere's geography has 
placed between the old and older world as the greatest link of that civilization 
whicliis destined to encircle the globe — to make that land the hot-bed of an- 
gry petty powers, sinking deeper and deeper as they quarrel and fight, and 
quarrelling and fighting more angrily as they sink deeper ? It is the very 
thing 3'our foreign enemies desire, and have long de>ired. When nulUfica- 
tion threatened to bring about secession — and the term secession was used 
at that early period — foreign journals stated in distinct words that Eng- 
land was deeply interested in the contest ; for nullification might bring on 
recession, and secession would cause a general disruption — an occurrence 
which would redound to the ess?ntial benefit of Great Britain. 

But the traitors of the North, who have been so aptly called adders or 
copperheads — striking, as these reptiles do, more secretly and deadly even 
than the rattlesnake, which has some chivalry, at least in its tail — believe, 
or pretend to believe, that no fragmentary disruption would follow a divis- 
ion of our country into North and South, and advocate a compi-omise, by 
which they affect to believe that the two portions may possibly be 
reunited after a provisional division, as our pedlers putty a broken china 
cup. 

As to the first, that we might pleasantly divide into two comfortable 
portions, we prefer being guided by the experience of all history, to follow- 
ing the traitors in their teachings. We will not hear of it. We live in 
an age when the word is Nationalization, not De-nationalization ; wdien 
fair Italy has risen, like a new-born goddess, out of the foaming waves of 
the Mediterranean. All destruction is quick and easy ; all growth and 
formation is slow and toilsome. Nations break up, like splendid mirrors 
dashed to the ground. They do not break into a number of well-shaped, 
neatly framed little looking-glasses. But a far more solemn truth even 
than this comes here into play. It is Avith nations as with families and 
with individuals. Those destined by nature to live in the bonds of friend- 
ship and mutual kindliness, become the bitterest and most irreconcilable 
enemies, when once feirly separated ia angry enmity ; in precisely the 
same degree in which affection and good-will were intended to sub:^ist be- 
tween them. We must have back the South, or else those wdio will not 
reunite with us must leave the country; we must have the country at any 
price. If, however, a plain division between the North and the South 
could take place, who will deny that those very traitors would instantly 
begin to mancEuvre for a gradual annexation of the North to the South ? 
It is known to be so. Some of them, void of all shame, have avowed it. 
They are ready to petition on their knees for annexation to the South, and 
to let the condescending grantor, '-holding the while his nose," introduce 
slavery, that blessed " corner-stone of" the newest " civilization," into the 



North, which has been happily purged from this evil. Let us put the heel 
oil this adder, and bruise all treason out of its head. 

As to the compromise which they propose, we know of no compromise 
with crime that is not criminal itself, and senseless in addition to its being 
wicked. New guarantees, indeed, may be asked for at the proper time, 
but it is now our turn to ask for them. They will be guarantees of 
peace, of the undisturbed integrity of our country, of law, and liberty, and 
.security, asked for and insisted upon by the Union men, avIio now pledge 
themselves not to listen to the words, compromise, new guarantees for the 
South, armistice, or convention of delegates from the South and North — 
as long as this war shall last, until tlie North is victorious, and shall have 
estabhshed again the national autliorlty over the length and breadth of the 
country as it was, over the United States dominion as it was before the 
breaking out of the crime, which is now ruining our fair land — ruining it 
in point of wealtii, but, with God's help, elevating it in character, strength, 
and dignity. 

We believe that the question of the issue, which must attend the present 
contest, according to the character it has now acquirel, is reduced to these 
simple words — Either the North conquers the Soutli, or the South con- 
quers the Nortli. Make up your minds for tliis alternative. Eitiier the 
North conquers the South and re-establishes law, freedom, and the integ- 
rity of our country, or the South conquers the North by arms, or by 
treason at home, and covers our portion of the country with disgrace and 
slavery. 

Let us not shrink from facts or mince the truth, but rather plainly pre- 
sent to our minds the essential character of the struggle in which hun- 
dreds of thousands, that ought to be brothers, are now engaged. What 
has brought us to these grave straits ? 

Are we two different races, as the new ctlmologists of the South, with 
profound knowledge of history and of their own skins, names, and language, 
proclaim ? Have they produced the names which Europe mentions when 
American literature is spoken of ? Have they produced our Crawfords? 
Have they advanced science ? Have they the great schools of the age ? 
Do they speak the choice idiom of the cultivated man ? Have the think- 
ers and Inventors of the age their homes in that region ? Is their standard 
of comfort exalted above that of ours ? AVluit has this Avondrous race 
produced ? what new idea has it added to the great stock of civilization ? 
It has produced cotton, and added the idea that slavery is divine. Does 
this establish a superior race ? 

The French, ourselves, the English, the Germans, the Italians, none of 
wliom are destitute of national self-gratulatlon, have ever made a prepos- 
terous claim of constituting a different race. Even the new idea of a 
liatin l\ace — a Bonaparte anachronism — is founded upon an error less re- 
volting to common sense and common knowledge. 

There is no fact or movement of greater significance in all history of 
the human race, than the settlement of tliis great continent by European 
people at a period when, in their portion of the globe, great nations had 
been formed, and the national polity had finally become the normal type 
of government ; and it is a fact equally pregnant with momentous results, 
that the northern portion of this hemisphere came to be colonized chiefly 



by men wlio brought along with them the seeds of self-government, and a 
living common law, instinct with the principles of manly self-dependence 
and civil freedom. 

The cliarters under Avhich they settled, and which divided the American 
territory iuto colonies, were of little more importance than the vessels 
and their names in which the settlers crossed the Atlantic ; nor had the 
origin of these charters a deep meaning, nor wa3 their source alw;n s 
pure. The people in this country always felt themselves to be one people, 
and unitedly they proclaimed and achieved their independence. The 
country as a whole was called by Washington and his compeers America, 
for want of a more individual name. Still, tliere was no outward and Icjjal 
bond between the colonies, except the crown of England ; and when cur 
people abjured their allegiance to th.it crown, each colony stood formally 
for itself. The Articles of Confederation were adopted, by which our fore- 
fathers attempted to establi^^h a confederacy, uniting all that felt them- 
selves to be of one nation, but were not one by outward legal form. It 
was the best united government our forefathers could think ot, or of which, 
perhaps, the combination of circumstances admitted. Each colony came 
gradually to be called a State, and called itself sovereign, although none of 
them had ever exercised any of the highest attributes of sovereignty ; nor 
did ever after the States do so. 

Wherever political societies are leagued together, be it by the frail bonds 
of a pure confederacy, or by the consciousness of the people that they are 
intrinsically one people, and form one nation, without, however, a posi- 
tive National Government, then the most powerful of these ill-united por- 
tions needs must rule and, as always more than one portion wishes to 
be the leader, intestine struggles ensue in all such incoherent governments. 
It has been so in antiquity ; it has been so in the middle ages ; it has been 
so, and is so in modern times. Athens and Sparta, Castile and Aragon, 
Austria and Prussia, are always jealous companions, readily turned into 
bitter enemies. Those of our forefathers Avho later became the framers 
of our Constitution, saw this approaching evil, and they observed many 
other ills which had already overtaken the confederacy. Even Wasliing- 
ington, the strong and tenacious patriot, nearly desponded. It Avas a 
dark period in our history ; and it was then that our fathers most boldly, 
yet most considerately, performed the greatest act that our annals record 
— they engrafted a national, complete and representative government on 
our insufficient confederacy ; a government with an exclusively National 
executive, in which the Senate, though still representing the States as 
States, became Nationalized in a great measure, and in which the House 
of Representatives became purely National like the Executive. Virginia, 
which, under the Articles of Confederation, was approaching the leader- 
ship over all (in the actual assumption of which she would ha\e been 
resisied by other rapidly growing states, which would inevitably have led 
to her Peloponnesian wai') — Virginia was now represented according to 
her population, like every other portion of the country; not as a unit, 
but by a number of representatives who were bound to vote individually, 
according to their consciences, as National men. The danger of in- 
ternal struggle and provincial bitterness had passed, and our country now 
fairly entered as an equal among the leading nations in the course, where 



nations, like Olymjiic chariot-horses, draw abreast the car of civiliza- 
tion. We advanced rapidly ; the task assigned to us by Providence was 
performed with a rapidity which had not been known before; for we had 
a National Government commensurate to our land and, it seemed, ade- 
qunte to onr destiny. 

But while thus united and freed from provincial retardation and entan- 
glements, a now portent appi-ari'd. 

Slavery, which had beon planted here in the colonial time-!, and which 
had b -en increased in this country, by the parent government. :)gainst the 
urgent protestations of the colonists, and especially of tlie Virginit-ns, ex- 
isted in all the colonies at the time when they declared themselves inde- 
pendent. It was felt by all to be an evil which must be djalt with as 
host it might be, and the gradu d extinction of which mnst be wisely yet 
surely provided for. Even Mr. Calhoun, in his earlier days, called slavery 
a scaffolding erected to rear the mansion of civilization, Avhich must be 
taken down when the fabric is finished. 

This institution gave way gradually as civilization advanced. It has 
done 60 in all periods of historyj and especially of Christian histor3^ 
Slavery melts away like snow before the rajs of rising civilization. The 
South envied the Nortii for getting rid of slavery so easily, and often ex- 
pressed her envy. But a combination of untoward circumstances led the 
Soutli to change h'T mind. P'irst, it Avas maintained that if slavery is an 
evil, it was their affair and no one else had a right to discuss it or to interfere 
with it ; then it came to be maintained that it was no evil ; then slavery 
came to be declared an important national element, which required its own 
distinct representation and especial protection ; then it was said — we feel 
ashamed to mention it — that slavery is a divine institution. To use the 
words of the great South-Carolinian, whose death we deeply mourn — of 
James Louis Fetigru — they placed, like the templars, Christ and Ba- 
phoinet on the same altar, worshipping God and Satan simultaneously. 
But though slavery were divine, they choked the wells of common knowl- 
edge with sand and stones, and enacted perpetual ignorance for the slave. 
Then the renewal of that traffic, the records of which fills far the darkest 
pages of European history, and which the most strenuous and protracted 
ctlbrts of civilized nations have not yet wholly succeeded in abolishing, 
was loudly called for; and our national laws, making that unhallowed 
trade piracy, were declared unconstitutional. Yet still another step was 
to be taken. It was proclaimed that slavery is a necessaiy element of a 
new and glorious civilization ; and those who call themselves conservatives 
plunged recklessly into a new-fangled theory of politics and civilization. 

Some thirty years ago we first heard of Southern Rights. Some twenty 
years since we were first made familiar with the expression, Southern 
Principles. Within the present lustre. Southern Civilization has been 
proclaimed What else remained but to invent Southern Mathematics 
and to decree a Southern God ? And what does Southern mean in this 
connection? Sou'h is a word which indicates relative position in 
geography Yet, in these combinations, it refers neither to geography, 
nor to climate, nor to product, but singly and exclusively to Slavery. 
Southern Rights, Southern Principles. Southern Civilization, and South- 
ern Honor or " Chivalry," are novel phrases, to express the new idea of 



principles and civilization cliaracterizel and tested bj tlie dependence of 
one class of people as chuttelupon another. A more appalling confusion, 
of ideas is not recorded in the history of any tribe or nation that has 
made any use of the terms— Eights, Principles, or Civilization. 

Thus slavery came to group the ditFurent portions of our country ; out-, 
side of, and indeed in hostility to, the National Government and Nationa;! . 
Constitution. The struggle for the leadership was upon us. The South 
declared openly that it must rule ; we, in the meantime, declaring that the ; 
Nation must rule, and if an is^sue is forced upon us, bctv\e3n the South and 
the North, then, indeeil, the North must rule and shall rule. This is the 
war in which we are now engaged — in which, at the moment this is Tead 
to you, the precious blood of your sons, and brothers, and fathers, is flow- 
ing. 

Whenever men are led, in the downward course of error and passion, 
ultimately to declare themselves, with immoral courage, in favor of a thing 
or principle which for centuries and thousands of years their own race 
has declared, by a united voice, an evil or a crime, the mischief does not 
stop with this single declaration. It naturally, and by a well-established 
law, unhinges the whole morality of man ; it warps his intellect, and in- 
flames his soul, with bewildering passions, .with detiance to the simplest 
truth and plainest fact, and with vindictive hatred toward those who 
cannot agree with him. It is a fearful thing to become the defiant idolater 
of wrong. Slavery, and the consequent separation from the rest of men, 
begot pride in the leading men of the South — absurdly even pretending 
to be of a dirierent and better race. Pride begot bitter and venomous 
hatred, and this bitter hatred, coupled with the love of owning men as 
things, begot at last a hatred of that which distinguishes the whole race to 
which we belong, more than aught else — the striving for and love of lib- 
erty. , ^ 

There is no room, then, for pacifying arguments with such men in arms 
against us, against their duty, their country, their civilization. Ail that 
remains for the present is the question. Who shall be the victor ? 

It is for all these reasons which have been stated, that we pledge our- 
selves anew, in unwavering loyalty, to stand by and support the Govern- 
ment in all its efforts to suppress the rebellion, and to spare no endeavor 
to maintain, unimpaired, the national unity, both in principle and terri- 
torial boundary. 

AVe will support the Government, and call on it with fi united voice to 
use greater and greater energ}^, as the contest may seem to draw to a 
close ; so that whatever advantages we may gain, we may pursue them 
with incretising efficiency, and bring every one in the military or civil 
service, thai may be slow in the performance of his duty, to a quick and 
efficient account. 

We approve of the Conscription Act, and will give our loyal aid in 
its beino- carried out, whenever the Government shall consider the increase 
of our army necessary ; and we believe that the energy of the Govern- 
ment should be plainly shown by retaliatory measures, in checking the 
savao-e brutalities committed by the enemy against our men in amis, or 
acraiust unarmed citizens, when they fall into their hands. 

We declare that slavery, the poisonous root of^this war, ought to l^e 



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compressed within its narrowest feasible limits, with a view to its speedy 
extinction. 

We declare thut this is no question of politics, but one of patri- 
otism ; and we hold every one to be a traitor to his country, that works 
or speaks in favor of our criminal enemies, directly or indirectly, whether 
his olfence bo such that the law can overtake him or not. 

Wq declare our inmost abhorrence of the secret societies which exist 
among us in favor of the rebellious enemy, and that we will denounce 
every participator in these nefarious conventicles, whenever known to us. 
We believe publicity the very basis of liberty. 

We pledge our fullest support of the government in every measure 
which it shall deem lit to adopt against xmrriendly and mischievous neu- 
trality •, and we call upon it, as citizens that have the right and duty to 
call for protection on their own government, to adopt the speediest possi- 
ble measures to that important end. 

We loyally support our government in its declarations and measures 
against all and every attempt of mediation, or armed or unarmed inter- 
ference in our civil war. 

Wc solemnly declare that we will resist every partition of any portion 
of our country to the last extremity, whether this partition should be 
brought about by rebellious or treasonable citizens of our own, or by 
foreign powers, in the way that Poland was torn to pieces. 

We pronounce every foreign minister accredited to our government, 
who tampers with our enemies, and holds covert intercourse with disloyal 
men among us, as fading in his duty toward us and toward his own people, 
and we await with attention the action of our government regarding the 
recent and surprising breach of this duty. 

And we call xipon every American, be he such by birth or choice, to 
join the loyal movement of these National Leagues, which is naught else 
than to joiu and follow our beckoning flag, and to adopt for his device — 



OUli COUNTKY! 



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